DIOGO EVANGELISTA
LIVES AND WORKS IN LISBON
EVANGELISTA.DIOGO(AT)GMAIL.COM
Diogo Evangelista’s work revolves around themes of desire, transformation, exploring the animist potential that the human imagination has to appropriate concepts, images and environment. His work, in its multiple forms – sculpture, drawing, painting, and video – explores the interstitial zones between art, science, realism, fiction, technology and nature.
A selection of his solo exhibitions include venues such as: CAC (Vilnius), Cripta 747 (Turin), Galeria Zé dos Bois (Lisbon), Escola das Artes (Oporto), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Lisbon), A Certain Lack of Coherence (Oporto), Galeria Francisco Fino (Lisbon), among others.
A selection of his solo exhibitions include venues such as: CAC (Vilnius), Cripta 747 (Turin), Galeria Zé dos Bois (Lisbon), Escola das Artes (Oporto), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Lisbon), A Certain Lack of Coherence (Oporto), Galeria Francisco Fino (Lisbon), among others.
His work has been presented in group exhibitions at the venues such as: Serralves Museum ( Porto), MAAT (Lisbon), CIAGJ (Guimarães), DRAF (London), MOMMA (Moscow), 11th Biennale Gwangju, Futura (Prague), Berardo Collection Museum (Lisbon) The Green Parrot (Barcelona), Caja Madrid (Barcelona), Culturgest (Porto).
PLUTÃO
Colégio das Artes da Universidade de Coimbra
March 3 - April 13, 2023
The College of Arts at the University of Coimbra presents "Plutão" an individual exhibition by the artist Diogo Evangelista. The three exhibition rooms have been transformed into a unique environment, composed of two new bodies of work, whose encounter involves the audience in a space-time experience, formed by multiple organisms in mutation.
The series of sculptures Moonlit, a metaphor for moonlight color, was specifically designed for the different rooms of the College of Arts. Through a set of lights and a repeating pattern, the sculptures envelop the exhibition in an intimate and mysterious atmosphere. This hypnotic atmosphere, akin to a game, leads us to the visualization of "Plutão," a piece that arises from the fusion of ten Evangelista videos, previously known as "Sky Exists" (2017), "Isle" (2013), "Spine Poem" (2015), "Magic Hands" (2017), "Organic Machinery" (2018), "Ylem the Egg" (2022), "Blind Faith" (2020), "Irrational Man" (2015), and "Sungazing" (2013). In the video installation of 8 screens resulting from this self-referential collage, Evangelista conceives a new diegetic narrative, scattered in time and space, proposing a journey among the various videos. The starting point for this narrative is the stripped ex-planet Pluto, an ice sphere 450 million kilometers away, symbolically associated with the unconscious, as well as the concepts of transformation, transmutation, death, and rebirth, themes that are central to the artist's work.
Following a trend already present in previous exhibitions by Diogo Evangelista, "Plutão" presents artworks that question the boundaries between reality and fiction, exploring the nebulous realm in which the real and the imaginary blend and merge. Working across various media, Evangelista seeks to expand his understanding of the concepts of cyclicity, origin, and transcendence, in search of a form of communication capable of surpassing language.
MAGNETIC FIELDS
Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisboa
March 19 - May 27, 2022
Magnetic Fields, Diogo Evangelista’s second exhibition at Galeria Francisco Fino, brings us a new body of work including painting, video and installation. In the environment that he has configured, the artist presents a selection of works that reinforces his interest in the concept of exhibition as a generative place, an inner space and a purely mental landscape to experiment with and test our tangible reality. Conceived as a spatial-temporal experience, the set of works, mostly shown for the first time, takes the visitor on a journey between fixed and moving images across a mutating universe made of different organisms in flux.
Farewell to Earth is a series of nine acrylic paintings, in the shape of pentagrams. For many societies, both ancient and contemporary, the pentagram is a symbol of transformation, rebirth and relationship between humans and the Universe. Painted with liquid chromium particles on the back, these pieces acquire a mirror-like quality, thus giving us back our physical presence in a virtual space and incorporating it into an unreal place, without a geography. This experience is intercepted by the reproduction of a set of urban icons with which the artist coexists on a daily basis. Visual noise, almost invisible, that emerges and takes place here.
The One and The Others is the connecting element to his previous exhibition (Íris, Brotéria, 2021). Its presence reinforces the idea of a continuous exhibition, which integrates several universes, in a progression of interactions — a narrative fragmented into different episodes. The work is a light sculpture composed of nine ellipses that evoke the idea of a system. Based on a set of drawings produced by the Spiritual Automata machine, which were presented in the gallery in 2019, the piece presupposes the hypothetical existence of a planet in the solar system which is still unknown. This cosmic and metaphorical vision incites a reflection about the dynamics, behaviours and group identity within a system. While some shapes seem to be isolated, others appear in the anonymity of the whole. In any case, they can only exist interdependently.
Bonus is a ghost that integrates the exhibition’s narrative intermittently and alternately with the other pieces. It is a hyper-real moment that accompanies, in real time, the International Space Station’s (ISS) progress as it orbits the Earth at a speed of roughly 27.000 km/h, every 90 minutes, completing 16 laps per day. Evangelista has appropriated the continuous live stream, broadcasting it live and on a larger scale, every 45 minutes. This transmission is accompanied by a soundtrack that results from an expanded abstraction of a version of the Beatles’ song Because, which imparts a melancholic character to the experience — not only from an environmental perspective in relation to the planet Earth, but also in the face of ruptured political and social relationships today. The ISS has been a symbol of union since the 90s — the result of a joined effort from several nations (now divided) towards a shared curiosity.
Ylem the Egg (HD video, colour, sound, 8 min), the work that completes the exhibition’s cosmology, portrays the hatching of one of the largest birds on the planet. Through a fictional narrative around the egg and the bird, the video alludes to the Jurassic period, the concepts of beginning and origin, the Big Bang and the relationship between interior and exterior at different scales. ‘Ylem’ was not only the name that was given in the lab to the egg represented in the video; it is also the term for the ‘primordial matter’ believed to constitute the Universe at the beginning of its formation. That which several ancient mythologies have named the ‘cosmic egg’.
IRIS (exhibition)
Brotéria, Lisboa
July 15 - September 11, 2021
“Presented by Brotéria, Iris is Diogo Evangelista’s first post-pandemic exhibition.
It comprises five works that reinforce the artist’s interest in the notions of the individual, the group, and the intertwining of all living things. Exhibited together for the first time, the five works offer an overview of Evangelista’s practice, revealing his interest in the exhibition as a generative place, an inner space, a purely mental landscape of experimentation and testing to the tangible reality.
All artworks are presented according to a specific configuration, deliberately thought for the space and the time of the exhibition.
"One and the others" is the work that opens the exhibition, a light sculpture composed of nine ellipses that refer to the idea of a system. Originated from a set of drawings produced by the machine (Spiritual Automata, 2019), this work unfolds from the hypothetical planet in the solar system that would still be unknown nowadays.This cosmic vision serves as a metaphor for a subsequent reflection on the dynamics of behavior and group identity within a system. Some of the forms appear to be isolated, while others disappear into the anonymity of the whole. Despite being abstract, these orbits suggest behaviors. They are, at the same time, delicate and dynamic – just like relationships.
In the same room, the work Echo has shown. Assuming the shape of a pentagram is painted with chromium and resin, gaining the characteristics of a mirror.
This work is a key for the cosmology of the exhibition, captures and replicates the viewer’s presence, and evokes the fourth dimension.
Several ancient and contemporary societies have used the pentagram to symbolize transformation, rebirth, and the relationship between humans and the universe.
The Oracle #330 Fox Red vinyl filters the interior of the gallery and the street outside, the same colored filter used in Redheads, an exhibition held by the artist in 2009. Recalls the tribute paid to the 2% of the population with the rarest hair color among humans. The redheads have been in correspondence with witchcraft and magic since the Middle Ages. It has also been the target of discrimination and violence.
In the second room are ensembled the sculpture Inflated with a Fluid (2018) with the proto-animation Iris (2021). The first is a humanoid bust halfway between a tarry mummy and a robotic endoskeleton. This figure represents a monument to alien life forms — evoking the presence of the other in the human.
Inflated with a Fluid and the proto-animation Iris, establish a direct relationship between the two, simulating a dynamic of observation and dialogue.
Iris is composed of 23 sequential paintings, expanded along a seven-meter line. It follows the 72 hours of the flower’s life cycle in a fictional drawing. Since classical antiquity, the Irises have had several meanings. One is the connection between divine and profane. Iris unfolds in time and space, requiring the viewer to move around to follow its unfolding.”
BLIND FAITH (book)
January 2021, Pt/ En
16×24 cm, 136 pages,
ISBN 978-989-9006-50-8
TEXTS by: Nuno Crespo, Joël Vacheron, Pedro Gomes
DESIGN: bouzadesign.com
PUBLISHED by: School of arts ( UCP) and Sistema Solar
BLIND FAITH (exhibition)
School of Arts (UCP), Oporto
Fabruary 12 — May 31, 2021
“It is a journey to a world that is outside time, outside history and outside language. An empty and silent world, bereft of any organism or life other than those present in the architecture and streets of the abandoned city.
It is a post-apocalyptic scenario in which faith is the only feeling that remains. Not that faith that we can talk about, name, or give form to in a name, a religion or system, but that faith whose existence and persistence we can perceive in most forms of life. There is no longer any place for fear of the things that haunt and pursue us in our earthly life.”
BLIND FAITH, 2020
HD video, 2:35:1, colour, 5.1 sound
“The search was to reach a kind of an unknown place in which we could feel familiar; through an atmosphere full of symbols that lead the viewer to a determined state of mind; where the real and tangible intersects and merges with fiction, enhancing an ambiguity similar to that of dreams and hallucinations.”
Exhibitions: Blind Faith, Escola das Artes, Porto, 24.01.2019 – 9.03.2020
REFLEXIVITY WITHOUT SUBJECTIVITY, 2020
Chrome, resin and paint under plexiglass
120 x 120 cm
“This mirrored pentagram contains itself and at the same time reflects the viewer and the space, thus invoking a subjective order involved in the nature of the mirror: it places us within a virtual space and, consequently, within a reality that is inherently vacillating in being the projection of another point of view, of another reality.”
Exhibitions: Blind Faith, Escola das Artes, Porto, 24.01.2019 – 9.03.2020
GATEWAY, 2020
Wood and Paint,
250 x 125 x 30 cm
“This false door acted as a device of passage between the worldly and the divine, a threshold between the physical and the metaphysical. Based on this matter of transformation and transcendence, the Gateway sculpture (2020) evokes the Egyptian false doors to allude to this dimensional transition.”
Exhibitions: Blind Faith, Escola das Artes, Porto, 24.01.2020 – 9.03.2020
ORGANIC MACHINERY
Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisboa
… emotions are biochemical mechanisms not based on intuition, imagination or freedom.
They are solely and exclusively based on calculations.
Organic and Machinery are two different concepts.
We are now increasingly investing on their seeming fusion and on making our interaction (more) intimately mechanical.
Informed by a constant flow of biometric data, the algorithms of Data.biz execute a transversal monitoring of us.
The synthetic character inducing the intergalactic journey in Organic Machinery (video), activates this secret ability.
Through our data, the interaction between artificial and human agents has become virtually indistinguishable.
We have achieved control of all emotional state.
Through binaural frequencies, we have merged a (mechanical)conscious activity and a subconscious energy(human).
Based on all processed information a new spiritual manifesto is generated, a more evolved form of knowledge is created.
In this context, and through a Machine-Brain ritual, Spiritual Automata has shown interest in interactions.
Spiritual Automata generated a set of apparently organic drawings which, via the observation of unidentified planets in the Solar System, speculates on the possibility of a new field of socialization. It has algorithmically defined a system of XY axes to represent this series of cosmic energies.
Using colours, portals unto the non-perceivable are designed inter-relations to the image of biotechnological sciences which, on different scales, encompass the invisible and the supra-sensorial.
Moreover, the need to materialize the invisible led us to conceive the Single Breeders:
a set of dysfunctional machines which invoke the spirit of the bird Kauai Õ´Õ. Its last song of instinct and survival is an attempt to attract an already inexistent mate. Announcing the end of its species.
We become confused.
Uneasily, we realize that the classification of social orders is a transcendental task.
Despite the resemblance between beings, incompatibility is crucial for the reproduction of our algorithm. THE ORGANIC-MECANICHAL WE invests on knowing itself beyond our constituent elements.
Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisboa
24.01.2019 - 9.03-2019
EXHIBITION SCRIPT :
… emotions are biochemical mechanisms not based on intuition, imagination or freedom.
They are solely and exclusively based on calculations.
Organic and Machinery are two different concepts.
We are now increasingly investing on their seeming fusion and on making our interaction (more) intimately mechanical.
Informed by a constant flow of biometric data, the algorithms of Data.biz execute a transversal monitoring of us.
The synthetic character inducing the intergalactic journey in Organic Machinery (video), activates this secret ability.
Through our data, the interaction between artificial and human agents has become virtually indistinguishable.
We have achieved control of all emotional state.
Through binaural frequencies, we have merged a (mechanical)conscious activity and a subconscious energy(human).
Based on all processed information a new spiritual manifesto is generated, a more evolved form of knowledge is created.
In this context, and through a Machine-Brain ritual, Spiritual Automata has shown interest in interactions.
Spiritual Automata generated a set of apparently organic drawings which, via the observation of unidentified planets in the Solar System, speculates on the possibility of a new field of socialization. It has algorithmically defined a system of XY axes to represent this series of cosmic energies.
Using colours, portals unto the non-perceivable are designed inter-relations to the image of biotechnological sciences which, on different scales, encompass the invisible and the supra-sensorial.
Moreover, the need to materialize the invisible led us to conceive the Single Breeders:
a set of dysfunctional machines which invoke the spirit of the bird Kauai Õ´Õ. Its last song of instinct and survival is an attempt to attract an already inexistent mate. Announcing the end of its species.
We become confused.
Uneasily, we realize that the classification of social orders is a transcendental task.
Despite the resemblance between beings, incompatibility is crucial for the reproduction of our algorithm. THE ORGANIC-MECANICHAL WE invests on knowing itself beyond our constituent elements.
exhibition guide
ORGANIC MACHINERY, 2018
Video (HD), colour, sound, 17 min
“Evangelista often uses archive images, which he changes to create his videos. Here we can see a sort of capsule-room, like the Japanese cabin hotels we see in Lost in Translation, which the narrator calls cryo bed. There are plenty of gender-related cinematographic and literary references throughout this video, besides the already mentioned Sofia Coppola’s movie, there is also Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or George Orwell’s 1984, with its anti-abuse discourse and call for resistance against a controlling and dreadfully bureaucratic political entity. The tone and colour of the images have also something of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner ( lm based on Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, a literary classic of the genre).
These references do not plunge Organic Machinery into a web of intimidating mentions, instead it broadens its visioning within a genre, sometimes disregarded, which is science fiction, particularly through its paramount opuses. Therefore, we realize that Diogo Evangelista’s dystopian work has a greater purpose, which is to bring to the present the questions that were raised in these classics about society and technological breakthroughs in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.” Barbara Valentina at Umbigo Magazine
Exhibitions: Towards the last unicorn, 55SP. São Paulo, 02–06.04.2019 | Organic Machinery, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, 24.01.2019 – 9.03.2019 | Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 2018.09.14 – 2018.10.18
SINGLE BREEDERS, 2019
Stainless steel, sound speaker, media player, 6 pieces.
“From one of the Single Breeders metal sculptures, a speaker plays a bird tweeting in a loop. Another sculpture has tiny round mirrors in its edges that show our image. Both establish a bridge between the machine and the human or nature. When we look at that Single Breeders and then into the mirror, we are also a part of that machine, of those metal tubes, just as when we listen to the tweeting of the birds coming from the speaker, built into another Single Breeder, it is actually a machine singing. Thus, they become biomechanical objects.” Bárbara Valentina at Umbigo Magazine
“The now-extinct species of the Australasian songbird was last seen in Hawaii in 1987. The recording of its song can be found online, on Youtube, exemplifying the sad and terrifying truth of our current times accelerated extinction of the species. It is the tune sang by the last O’o male in an attempt to attract a female, who, alas, will never come. Consequently, in the exhibition, these eager to breed tube-birds (all male, or are they?) are condemned to celibacy, and eventually, extinction. It is a little of a mind-stretch to identify the installations to flesh, feathers, and bones, but Evangelista’s animistic invitation probably rather echoes concepts such as, let’s say, synthesising diamonds out of human ashes. Or even something like the idea of a transference of the O’o bird’s consciousness — or strictly speaking, his vocals — to a succession of tubular amplifiers. This way, the installations act as vessels to a ghostly presence, playing music like the scattered pipes of a cosmic organ. The whole offers a subtle experience with uncanny and touching undertones.” Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva at Contemporânea
Exhibitions: Organic Machinery, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, 24.01.2019 – 9.03.2019
SPIRITUAL AUTOMATA, 2019
Acrylic on board 82 × 122 cm (each board)
“The series of acrylic paintings Spiritual Automata, 2019, are colorful machine-generated geometrical line drawings on blackboards. Supposedly imitating, or attempting to pass for, free-hand drawings, they are reminiscent of those 90s screensavers computer fractal designs, only painted and more minimal. They do carry that same impression of looped motion those algorithms executed but as some sorts of screenshots. They lack in composition, as if thrown on the black surfaces without consideration for it. And as such, they act less as drawings and perhaps more as recordings of some vibrations running through space. The cryptic exhibition statement mentions “unidentified planets / in the Solar System” so they may well represent the orbits traced by those celestial unidentified bodies. In any case, as sidekicks, they suggest a digital quality in par with the hypnotic dimension of the O’o’s bird sound and its pipe-carriers, uncharacteristically adding humanity to the room, thanks to their group-like presence, and in spite of their arbitrary and computerised forms.” Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva at Contemporânea
Exhibitions: Drawing section, Artissima, Turin, 1 – 3.11.2019, Organic Machinery, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, 24.01.2019 – 9.03.2019
SPINNING WHEEL
Contemporary Art Center CAC, Vilnius
September 14 — October 18, 2018
Curated by João Laia
Spinning Wheel is the first solo presentation of Portuguese artist Diogo Evangelista’s work in the Baltic countries. Conceived as an immersive experience, the exhibition takes its name from a 2017 performance which investigates the triangulation between bodily motion, mechanics and the visible. The different elements of the project configure a fluid organism which looks into the mutant configuration of our lived environments. The exhibition presents a number of new work, including the new video Organic Machinery, and shows the video installation The Sky Exists for the first time in an outdoor setting. Evangelista’s body of work revolves around themes of desire and transformation, exploring the animist potential that the human imagination has to appropriate concepts, images, objects, narratives and environments.
exhibition guide
INFLATED WITH A FLUID, 2O18
Cripta 747, Turin
Inflated with a Fluid aims to put together different elements that directly and indirectly inform Evangelista’s practice. The event provided a drawing workshop, a hot drink specially made for the event, a screening of the artist’s early video works – Isle (2013), Sungazing (2013), Spine Poem (2015), Mars (ASMR) (2013), Sweat (2013), Hands (2017) and 84 Percent (2016); a projection of Flesh for Frankenstein by Paul Morrisey, a lecture by Danilo Tachino about the legend of Fetonte and the mythological connection between the city of Turin and the world of the ancient Egyptians, and a poster by Duvida Press for the book “Anthony Mill (sculptures 1987-89)”. The performance proposes an exercise of abstraction that plays with fictional and factual imagination.
UNTITLED ASPHALT, 2017
Asphalt and wooden bases 1 m3 (7 pieces)
Through the research developed during his residence at Cripta747, the artist explores his interest in the observation of the unspectacular. A series of objects with geometrical bodies, made of pure asphalt, make ecological issues, Eastern philosophy, archaeology, and science fiction come to mind. The weight and the smell of these black stones is evident as soon as you enter the space. In the exhibition, the sculptures are set up on the form-works into an alike arrangement, reminiscent of an ethnographic archive where finds made in an era when society was deeply dependent on fossil fuels are kept.
DIOGO EVANGELISTA
Artist edition
February 2019, En
29×23 cm, 264 pages
VISIONARY HEADS, 2018
Acrylic paint on polyurethane foam
This sculptural set presents an assembly of humanoid busts. Halfway between metal mummies and robotic endoskeletons, the figures stand as a monument to alien life forms while singling the presence of the other in the human.
Exhibitions: Old sins, O Armário, Lisbon, 04.05.2019 – 14.06.2019, Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 14.09.2018 –18.10.2018
BLOOD-CHAIN, 2018
Uv-print on wood
70 × 50 cm (18 pieces)
“This series of paintings portrays a single enlargement of human red blood cells. As a set and organised in a straight line, the images build a sort of circulatory system connecting all the works in the show and emphasising its fluid environment.
Evangelista considers blood as a liquid that unites us all while exploring the complexities of our inner workings.”
Exhibitions: Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 2018.09.14 – 2018.10.18
SPACE OF FLOWS
Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon
April 22 — June 24, 2017
Curated by João Laia
Zé dos Bois presents, between April 22 and June 24, the exhibition Espaços de Fluxos, by Diogo Evangelista. Integrated in BOCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts this exhibition presents the research that the artist has been developing around the seduction mechanisms and perceptual regimes of the contemporary image.
Espaço de Fluxos has as its central motto the figure of the human being and it explores ideas such as invisibility and introspection. The project is set up as a living organism, where the set of works presented, mostly never shown before, creates an environment that absorbs the public within it, through different sensory stimuli, creating an immersive experience. The title is appropriate from a homonymous text by Manuel Castells that describes a cultural typology of great abstraction and its dynamic interactions with digital media. The concept of ‘espaços de fluxos’ (‘space of flows’) conceptualizes the configurations of space and time that are established under the new technological paradigm, which, among other valences and characteristics, allows synchronous interactions at a distance.
Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon
April 22 — June 24, 2017
Curated by João Laia
Zé dos Bois presents, between April 22 and June 24, the exhibition Espaços de Fluxos, by Diogo Evangelista. Integrated in BOCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts this exhibition presents the research that the artist has been developing around the seduction mechanisms and perceptual regimes of the contemporary image.
Espaço de Fluxos has as its central motto the figure of the human being and it explores ideas such as invisibility and introspection. The project is set up as a living organism, where the set of works presented, mostly never shown before, creates an environment that absorbs the public within it, through different sensory stimuli, creating an immersive experience. The title is appropriate from a homonymous text by Manuel Castells that describes a cultural typology of great abstraction and its dynamic interactions with digital media. The concept of ‘espaços de fluxos’ (‘space of flows’) conceptualizes the configurations of space and time that are established under the new technological paradigm, which, among other valences and characteristics, allows synchronous interactions at a distance.
MAGIC HANDS, 2017
HD video, sound, colour, 30 min loop
Proposing a moment of pause and introspection hybridised between the body and the soul, this video presents a fragmented, enlarged and subjective vision of the hands. It described a series of choreographic movements, that suggest an experience of “a lucid dream” hypnotic, ritualistic and shamanic. João Laia Press-release for Space of Flows.
Exhibitions: Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017
DOUBLE HEAD, 2017
Engine, chain, wood 80 x 120 cm
Double Head is a rotating portrait, that displays and hides its mechanism. The game of shadows projects a journey into the interior of a mind and explores the psychological complexity of the human being. João Laia Press-release for Space of Flows.
Exhibitions: Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017
SPINNING WHEEL, 2017
Performer, bicycle, cycling rollers, endless
“ With Spinning Wheel, Diogo Evangelista offers a sort of interpretation of the fantastical hypotheses expressed in The Third Policeman especially in relation to the idea of the potential for “becoming a bike”. In this installation, the bicycle has been made by the cyclist himself so that it is perfectly adapted to his form. When he pedals at great speed on the rollers, his legs are locked into a movement so fast that the lower part of his body seems to dissolve and gradually merge with the bicycle. Meanwhile the upper part of his body remains completely still and therefore visible. When it is activated, the installation transforms the exhibition space into a sort of matrix in which the public can observe the production and transmission of signals.
A harmony emerges from this mechanical fiction which presents the fantasy of a fusion between human and machine. The human action is manifested through chromatic modulations and demodulations that vary in intensity according to the velocity.
When the wheels turn, the light stimulation created by electroluminescent diodes fixed to the spokes bears a resemblance to Marcel Duchamp’s rototreliefs.” Joël Vacheron, Around a White Hole.
Exhibitions: Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 14.09.2018 – 18.10.2018, Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois (ZDB), Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017
VOLUNTEERS, 2016
Uv-print, PVC, blue light
Volunteers explores depression as a crosscutting element in contemporary society. The use of psilocybin as therapy for a psychological condition is replaced by an understanding of brain connectivity as synesthetic event between abstraction and color.
Exhibitions: Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017
H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D, MMOMA (Moscow Museum of Modern Art), V Moscow International Biennial of Young Art, Moscow, 03.06.2016 – 14.08.2016
EIGHT-FOUR PERCENT, 2016
Video (HD), colour, sound 6 min, loop
“A curiosity for evolution is shared by Diogo Evangelista, whose research into genetically-modified glow-fish draws a synaesthetic narrative about the properties of these new proteins as potentially surpassing the hand of the divine by healing future diseases. Pinpointing genetic encoding as a method for potentiating speciation, the molecular fiction of this video addresses the power of morphogenesis as we stand facing an era of post-human corporealities. An economy of flows maps mutating bodies while reminding us of the phantoms of the psychedelic era.” Margarida Mendes Press-release for Matter Fictions
Exhibitions: Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017 Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 14.09.2018 – 18.10.2018 Matter Fictions, Museu Coleção Berardo, 04-05-2016 – 21.08.2016
THE SKY EXISTS, 2017
HD Video, sound, colour, Led screen, 6 min
The Sky Exists, a work commissioned by MAAT, presents a video transmission with a permanent sunrise in a loop. Invaded by technical interferences and information typically found on a news broadcast or an urban outdoor, the video suggests an unstable condition. In fact, it constitutes a fictional recreation of a false piece of news gone viral. In it, it was reported that, due to the high level of pollution, the sunrise would be transmitted live in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. From this idea, the artist feigns an extreme meteorological condition that points to a pre-apocalyptic planet. Alerting us to current ecological issues, the narrative suggests a dystopic reality where everything seems to fail and the population has lost track of their essential references.
Exhibitions: Utopia/Dystopia – A Paradigm Shift, MAAT, Lisbon, 22.03.2017 – 21.08.2017. Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 2018.09.14 – 2018.10.1
ODOUR, 2017
Live performance at Campanhã Theater, Porto
A girl with a huge nose distributes in the entrance of the show a personal card with the daily fragrance of the singer; the only element missing from her fans.
In an intimate and invisible action, the theatre is involved in its smell. Behind it is a set of rotating images of one of the ingredients of the perfume seen under a microscope.
AN INDIVIDUAL NOTE ON IMAGES SOUNDS AND TECHNOLOGIES, 2016
UV-print, resin on canvas 186 × 186 cm
“How could a banal technological object be imbued with so much sensuality? How could an object that had represented the future so forcefully become obsolete so quickly? What can a technology such as the compact disc teach us about death and human nature?
The issues raised by the meteoric trajectory of this technology had certainly crossed his mind while he was transferring his compact discs to the mp3 format. He had felt a curious sensation at the touch of these objects that had represented the future so emphatically and now seemed destined to dematerialise. Suddenly, their finite fragility seemed patently obvious, reminding him that the future could not be separated from programmed obsolescence. A euphemism for mortality. He felt a certain empathy for these objects, symbols of a bygone era, which had appeared on earth at the same time as him. Handling them, his experience of expressions such as ‘life cycles’ and ‘technological fictions’ was physiological. The compact disc seemed to him to be a medium designed for exploring the uncanny relationships that we have with technological objects. The reflection of his face on the mirrored surface merely amplified the spell-binding intensity of this ‘magnetic coupling’.
It was, in a way, the future that he held in his hands.
The act of destruction had become extremely difficult, even impossible. Half way between elation and depression, between humanity and machinery, between reality and fantasy, he imagined that this object could become a sort of optical channel for exploring the innermost aspects of humanity and the furthest reaches of the universe. His eyes swept over the iridescent surface like lasers. Images, sounds and visions converged like beams that completely blew his mind. Refraction struck his face with extreme stroboscopic intensity. His vision was increasingly punctuated with interferences that crackled like electronic glitches. His mind began to wander and he became completely unable to concentrate. He simply let himself be carried along in the spinning, shimmering, reverberating whirlwind created by the giant disc. He felt as though gravity was drawing him towards a mandala inhabited by ghostly presences.
All his attention was now absorbed by the intensity of that gaping white hole.” Joël Vacheron, Around a White Hole.
Exhibitions : Constelações I, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, 11.04.2019 – 22.09.2019 Space of Flows, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, 22.04.2017 – 24.06.2017 Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 2018.09.14 – 2018.10.18The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale, 02.09.2016 – 06-10.2016
DOWN IN THE VALLEY
Mnac, Lisbon
Sonae media award
November 21— January 31, 2016
Down in the Valley video installation questions the relationship between the human, the automaton and the ape. Taking advantage of public image sources - such as youtube or online footage banks - alongside his personal archive, Evangelista creates three new fictions that explore the current optimization of the human and the limits of illusionism.
IRRATIONAL MAN, 2015
Video (SD), colour, sound, 6 min
Irrational Man explores the limits of human cognition. In a slapstick narrative that appeals to a synaesthetic nostalgia, we are guided by a chromatic oscillation that disturbs our cerebral hemispheres in a rhythmic unravelling that breaks the linearity of perception. This oceanic sensoriality is confronted by a voice-over that swims across the gap between the body and the mind, provoking doubtful reflections in the machine-like gestures of the primate in front of us. Irrational Man brings us closer to this Uncanny Valley, where our similitude with robots is foregrounded. Would we be able to accept the source of emotional mechanisms and aesthetic sensibilities? Margarida Mendes, Press-release for Down in the Valley
Margarida Mendes, Press-release for Down in the Valley
Exhibitions: Spinning Wheel, CAC, Vilnius, 14.09.2018 – 18.10.2018 Smoke and Mirrors, DAMA, Turin, 03.11.2017 Magician’s Right Hand, Futura, Prague, 24.09.2016 – 27.11.2016 Down in the Valley, Sonae Media Award, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, 21.11.2015 – 31. 01.2016
SPINE POEM, 2015
Video (HD), b/w, sound, 6:36 min
Spine Poem portrays the gestural agility of a culinary artisan in a close-up of the making of an improbable recipe: fish spine bone. The dissection of the animal is choreographed with the detailed precision of a ritual while a storm rages outside. In this piece of science fiction, the sublimation of an element is carried out through the mechanization of surgical gestures, luring us into the limits of human sophistication. The film’s sequences are interrupted by acidic sound cuts accompanying the syncopated structuralism of the fish spine bone. Margarida Mendes, Press-release for Down in the Valley
Exhibitions: Down in the Valley, Sonae Media Award, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, 21.11.2015 – 31-01.2016
MAGICIAN`S END, 2015
Video (SD), rear projection on red wall, colour, mute,11:11 min
Magician’s End envelops the exhibition hall in a radioactive undertone. In the image we witness the defeat of the great master Houdini (1874-1926), a famous magician who became known for posterity for his celebrated escapes from highly dangerous situations, and for battling against charlatans in the world of illusionism, until a rival caught him off guard and defeated him. In Magician’s End, we are haunted by the fatal trajectory of this kryptonite blow, which afflicts us in stop motion ad aeternum, proving that ultimately all illusions fall to the ground.
Margarida Mendes, Press-release for Down in the Valley
Exhibitions: Magicians’s Right Hand, Futura, Prague, 24.09.2016 – 27.11.2016 • Down in the Valley, Sonae Media Award, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, 21.11.2015 – 31-01.2016
SWEAT, 2014
Video SD, mute, colour, 3:47 min
“A floor-level monitor displays a one-channel video, manipulating a two-page cut-out from a 1976 Penthouse issue.”
ISLE, MARS AND WOUNDED BULL, MAN & BIRD
Serralves Museum, Oporto | Bes Arte e Finança, Lisbon
Bes revelação 2013
November 23 — January 26, 2014
Curated by Filipa Ramos
Diogo Evangelista`s installation of the videos Isle, Mars and Wounded Bull, Man & Bird, creates an environment that deals with the circumstances of production, circulation and reception of images, and explores how these inform and shape cultural memory. Interested in comprehending the relations between the archetypical motifs
of paradise, utopia, pleasure and illusion and their earthbound physical correspondences, the artist produced a series of short video compositions that meet such tropes through the combination of found footage and sound materials from diverse proveniences. Isle presents glimpses of images of birds-of-paradise, those almost magical, very rarely seen animals, in Mars we can almost touch the texture of a seemingly lunar, bluish landscape, which was produced through a close-up of a Yves Klein painting; Wounded Bull, Man & Bird take us across candle-lit pages that depict a cave painting. Each video is accompanied by a very peculiar soundscape, which stretches the meanings and forms of impact of the moving images. Filipa Ramos, 2013
ISLE, 2013
HD video, sound, colour, 6:24 min.
A hypnotic world of visual and auditive sensory impressions passes over the mere inactive perception and creates a powerful sphere, which faces the viewer with the untamed energy of profound desire. Composed of cosmic energy fields, frowningly deep roar and the tempting talking of a female voice, the film conveys a liberating and likewise captivating affectivity. Isle combines coloured footage of birds in Papua New Guinea with a cosmos animation made from micro dust particles, scaling a non-linear dreamscape.
Exhibitions: Vanishing Point, Lisbon Municipal Gallery, 16.05.2019 – 1.09.2019, 10000 years later between Venus and Mars, Porto Municipal Gallery, 9.12.2017 – 18.02.2018, Uma Coleção = Um Museu | 2007 – 2017, Elvas Contemporary Art Museum, 8.07.2018 – 01.04.2018, BES Revelação Award, BES Arte e Finança Gallery, 07.05.2014 – 2.06.2014, BES Revelação Award, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, 25.11.2013 – 26.01.2013
Screenings: Outdoor I, Warm , São Paulo, 2014 : Art Basel film sector, Hong Kong Arts Centre 15 – 17.06.2014.
WOUNDED BULL, MAN & BIRD, 2013
HD video, sound, colour 6 min
Wounded Bull, Man & Bird, take us across candle-lit pages that depict a cave painting. This is the only representation of a human being in the entire Lascaux cave. It is a stick figure, and the four fingers on each hand are splayed into fan shapes. The body is tilted at a 45° angle, no doubt to the bison’s abrupt about-face. Below the figure, we can see a bird perched on a stick, although the silhouette is not defined enough for us to make out its species. It shares certain characteristics, even links, with the man below. These are unique themes for the cave; among other things, their heads have been drawn similarly. In certain primitive or ancient societies, birds are often assigned the role of psychopomp or conductor of souls.
Exhibitions: BES Revelação Award, BES Arte e Finança Gallery, 07.05.2014 – 2.06.2014 BES Revelação Award, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, 25.11.2013 – 26.01.2013
MARS, 2014
HD video, sound, colour 1:27 min
In Mars we can almost touch the texture of a seemingly lunar, bluish landscape, which was produced through a close-up of a Yves Klein painting.
Exhibitions: Baltic triennale, 2014 BES Revelação Award, BES Arte e Finança Gallery, 07.05.2014 – 2.06.2014 BES Revelação Award, Serralves Museum, 25.11.2013 – 26.01.2014
SUNGAZING (exhibition)
Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon.
April 23 — January 26, 2013
Appropriation, intervention, decontextualization, superimposition. Diogo Evangelista’s work takes shape within these processes, drawing on a multitude of sources, materials and, above all, images. Strongly multidisciplinary in nature, his work reveals a particular interest in images or, to be more precise, in the experience (the reception) and the materiality of images. The connection between these two elements runs through many of his works and acquires an added complexity if we consider the way in which the artist works with the anonymous and disordered repertoire of mass culture (across its most diverse manifestations).
The pieces shown at Quadrum are paintings and moving image works. The paintings belong to a body of work which Diogo Evangelista has been developing and exhibiting.
Diogo Evangelista pursues the transformative action of art, collaging images, evoking different places, practices and times. He questions the viewer mentally as well as visually. He wants to involve and confuse our senses, attack our perception. This is what happens with the slow morphing in the video ‘Sungazing’, for example. At first, it is unclear whether the image actually moves, if we remain still, or if someone has placed us under a strange spell. The artist states: ‘I want to evoke different states of perception, a connection with the unconscious, with different levels of consciousness, different approaches to reality, parallel worlds’. José Marmeleira at Budapest Cycle
Full text here
SUNGAZING, 2015
Video SD, sound, colour, 21:23 min
Sungazing, a 23-minute video work by Diogo Evangelista is composed of lengthy panoramic camera movements over a series of images of Moroccan carpets, accompanied by abstract drone sounds of Iranian origin. The film starts as it ends, with a close up of the sun, progressively zoomed out to a crescendo and marking the importance of spatial scale throughout all the film, almost as if referencing the well known Eames’ film “Powers of 10”. The title of the video refers to a very old exercise – that of prolongedly gazing at the sun, a practice held since ancient Egypt times through today as a method of meditation and stimulation of self-induced visual hallucination. It is precisely the act of self-induced hallucination that the artist seems to incite with his video. Developing a structure that renders a space for meditation, Sungazing drives the viewers with the power of sensorial immersion, subduing them with their own perceptive triggers. The main section of the film, composed of slow vertical travelling movements with close-ups of the so-called ‘Boucherouite rag rugs’, that are idiosyncratic both in their conception and patterns. Margarida Mendes
Exhibitions: The World of interiors, The Green Parrot, Barcelona, 09.04.2014 – 30.05.2014 From Radiance and Dissolution, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 20.09.2013 – 26-10.2013 Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon, 23.04.2013 – 05.05.2013 A Quest for Flight or the Aurora of Psychedelia, Barber Shop, Lisbon, 03.04.2013
NO FUTURE INT THAT PLACE, 2013
Parkour, Lisbon,
september 15 – October 13, 2012
Set of five wooden made sculptures, video projection, yellow lights.
“A playful pastoral installation of cut-out figures taken from vintage Nudist magazines, which dance and play musical instruments in front of a giant lunar eclipse. No Future in That Place, 2012, was first presented in Lisbon at Parkour gallery, and points to the artist’s interest in utopian counter-cultures that emphasise commonality, union, and joy”. João Mourão | Luís Silva press-release for Greater than the Sum
“The scene, frozen in time, is theatrical and scenographic - the sculptures are enlarged images of a German dance magazine from the beginning of the last century. On the other hand, it is embodied in the light of the giant red moon, and in the dancers who form a community of moving bodies: the characters resemble extraterrestrials engaging in exuberant any ritual of atavistic modernism. What is the future of a place (abandoned), or freed from the bonds of a preconceived society?” Inês Geraldes Cardoso at Contemporânea
Exhibitions: Greater than the Sum, David Roberts Art Foundation, 04.05.2017 – 05.06.2017 No Future in That Place, Parkour, Lisbon, 15.09 2012 – 13.10. 2012
RIGHT LOBE
Artist edition
“ The book ‘Right Lobe (working script)’, produced during the artist’s Budapest residency in the summer of 2012. ‘It is a script/ diary which has been the basis for my most recent works. A basis in which concepts and images overlap. A book of collages, consisting of four core components: excerpts from the ‘Psychedelics Encyclopedia’ by Peter Stafford, images of groups of nudists exercising (with no apparent origin or date), Moroccan boucherouite rugs and Van Gogh drawings produced around 1890. When you read it, your first impression is that these are accounts of dreams. Later you realise that they are hallucinations’.” José Marmeleira at Budapest Cycle.
AN ARGUMENT AGAINTS ANTI-REALISM, 2013
HD video, colour, sound, 18 min
‘An argument against anti-realism’ shows superimposed images of plants and leaves that are not static. They tremble and vibrate, creating mysterious transparencies, fantastic beings in a pink forest. There is no point in ascribing form or meaning to these images: that is not the intention. A female voice reads phrases and words taken from ‘Right Lobe (working script)’ which allude to the alteration of states of perception, of sensibility and knowledge, to extraordinary and unreal situations and experiences. They are not intended to illustrate the images, yet in the softly didactic tone of the speaker, they emphasise what those images suggest: the unbounded and seductive imagination of art. José Marmeleira at Budapest Cycle publishing.